Sensitivity and specificity of the question “do you have any concerns regarding your mouth related to undergoing surgery?” for predicting perioperative oral health problems in patients with primary esophageal and lung cancer: a retrospective observational study

Background Perioperative oral management contributes to the prevention of dental/systemic complications. However, a professional dental checkup before surgery is generally not performed and relies on the patient’s answer to a simple question by medical professionals other than dentists: “Do you have any concerns regarding your mouth related to undergoing surgery?” Here, we evaluated the sensitivity and specificity of this question for predicting perioperative oral health problems in patients with primary esophageal and primary lung cancer.
Methods We performed an oral cavity check in all patients before scheduled surgery for primary esophageal and lung cancer. A total of 183 patients were enrolled (M, 112; F, 71; 24–88 years, median, 69 years), consisting of 61 with primary esophageal cancer (M, 46; F, 15; 24–85 years, median, 69 years) and 122 with primary lung cancer (M, 66; F; 56; 33–88 years, median, 69 years). All subjects provided a response to this question, and an oral cavity check was performed by dentists. The sensitivity and specificity of this question for detecting oral health problems were evaluated retrospectively.
Results Overall sensitivity and specificity for detecting oral health problems were 0.263 and 0.898, respectively. There were no significant differences by sex or disease (primary esophageal or lung cancer).
Conclusion This simple question has low sensitivity but high specificity for detecting oral health problems. Although challenging to detect surgical patients with oral health problems by simply asking questions, the results indicated that patients with oral complaints are more likely to have problems during surgery.

The version of record of this article, first published in Perioperative Medicine, is available online at Publisher’s website: http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13741-024-00394-8